Ten foul facts about the tudors

The Terrible Tudors by Terry Deary

Through Terrible Tudors I entered Terry Deary‘s world and, to this day, this book is still the one I have enjoyed the most. However, I’m sure there are many Horrible Histories volumes that await to be read and reviewed, and I bet those will be as fascinating as the one I’m going to talk about here.

The Terrible Tudor timeline stretches from the end of The War of the Roses to the last day of Queen Elizabeth I’s reign. Besides the Tudor dynasty, you will read about life and death in Tudor times, including awful doctors and remedies that didn’t work, school and rules, crimes, thieves’ slang and punishments, “terrible Shakespeare” (this is how Terry Deary gratulates the English bard), theatre, the mystery of Christopher Marlowe’s sudden disappearance, witches and superstitions, strange food and endless banquets, Sir Francis Drake and the Spanish Armada, life for women and so on.

Before revealing an interesting aspect I found in the chapter entitled Terrible Shakespeare, I cannot restrain myself from writing some peculiar facts about Queen Elizabeth I (or Gloriana, a term my headmaster taught me in high school). The English Sovereign was very ugly, had very bad teeth, a quick-temper and bathed only four times a year. Are you surprised in a bad way? Oh, but her majesty was cleaner than King Louis XIV, who took only three baths per year.

Now let’s leave the filth behind – there’s a lot of that in Tudor England anyway – and return to Shakespeare. I won’t bore you with Shakespearean insults, because you might already know some of them from the multitude of articles found on the internet about this subject; but I’m sure that you haven’t heard of Shakespeare’s curse. Yes, King Tut is not alone when it comes to curses. Some people speculate that plays unknown to us might be buried with Shakespeare’s body, but nobody had the courage to open the tomb and put the curse to the test. Have I stirred your interest a little? Here is the epitaph the bard wrote himself:

BLEST BE THE MAN THAT SPARES THESE STONESAND CURST BE HE THAT MOVES MY BONES (Loc.665)

In the end, Terry Deary asks the reader if one wants to live in Tudor times. Are we thankful that we live in a different and better era or do we agree with the history books that the Tudor period was the “Golden Age of Good Queen Bess and Jolly Old Henry VIII?” (Loc. 1540)

Henry VIII (1509 - 1547) - 10 Minute History

10 facts about the Tudors!

Here, writing for History Extra , Dr Nicola Clark reveals five unusual facts about the Tudor rulers and the royal court. Spectacles at this time were usually armless, designed to sit on the bridge of the nose or to be handheld. Poor eyesight was common in Tudor England and there was little that could be done about it. The many remedies for eye conditions that can be found in early modern medical recipe books show that people certainly tried to cure themselves — but the vast array of remedies suggests none of them were very effective! With a court full of young and rowdy men, Henry VIII felt that a deterrent was necessary to control his courtiers, and he chose to make the punishment fit the crime.

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In , More became Lord Chancellor on the fall of Wolsey, and he ruthlessly persecuted Protestants while strongly opposing the proposed relaxation of the heresy laws. In a Protestant named Thomas Hitton was burned at Maidstone. He was made a saint in

Some of it has a basis in fact, but a great deal of artistic license has been employed. Jonathan Rhys Myers, for instance, might not be a serious historian's first choice for the role of Henry VIII, but that's only a cosmetic objection. It's a wonder that the producers felt the need to change anything; the Tudors were hardly a boring bunch. Here are the unadorned, but nonetheless interesting, facts about the Tudors. The Tudor dynasty consisted of five monarchs plus one interloper.